Fringe candidates disregard the odds

WELDON -- Pete Di Lauro, Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate, wheels a cart through the produce section of his local Wal-Mart on a recent spring day, four kids in tow, considering the high price of produce.

A bell pepper used to be 39 cents, he says. "Now it's $1.39."

He wonders: When was the last time U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Dole was in a Wal-Mart?

When Republican voters step into the polling booth in North Carolina's primary May 6, they will know practically nothing about this man, a native of New York City now living in tiny Weldon. Di Lauro won't appear in any political ads on voters' TVs this spring. He won't host $1,000-a-plate fundraisers or shake hands at Rotary club lunches.

He has neither the money nor the know-how for any of that.

Yet in an era of criminal lobbying scandals and high-priced political consultants, perhaps candidacies such as Di Lauro's feel a little closer to the ideals of the Constitution.

Every election season, hundreds of people become candidates across the country with budgets of nothing, believing their civics teachers were right -- anyone really can grow up to serve in public office.

Di Lauro joined fringe candidates in North Carolina running for governor, for Congress, for judgeships, for local town races. They are the ones who raise scarcely any money, campaign little, are often written off by the major media and party power players.

Some are searching for attention to a particular issue. Some are just searching for attention.

Di Lauro firmly believes that Washington politicians are sending the country in the wrong direction and that he, an unemployed former cop with a penchant for discount shopping, can make a difference.

He says that the war in Iraq has killed 4,000 U.S. troops needlessly, that more should be done to fight illegal immigration, that lawyers control America and that he, a struggling husband and father trying to make ends meet, understands the hardships of average North Carolina residents.

"You got the same people doing the same thing," Di Lauro said recently, describing his problem with Congress. "Who's responsible for all the woes of the government?"

Some political scientists call these wannabes on the edge "no-hope-er" candidates, because they have no hope of winning.

But they do have hope.

It's the hope that drives them.

It's a warm spring day, and Di Lauro, 60, pokes through piles of paper cluttering his den before producing a clutch of envelopes he says have poured into his mailbox since he filed for office. They have various return addresses: a Lillington community club, a Cary business group, a local radio station.

More invitations are piled in the kitchen and the dining room. Di Lauro says he can't possibly make it to all these events just weeks before the primary.

How, he wonders, can you drive two hours here, then three hours there, then four hours there?

This isn't Di Lauro's first crack at public office. He ran for governor and county sheriff in New Jersey in the 1990s. He ran for town commissioner of Weldon last fall. He got eight votes.

Now Di Lauro has his attention on the U.S. Senate race. He's got nothing personal against Dole, he says. It's just that she's been working in Washington for 40 years. It's time for her to go.

A torn black T-shirt stretches across the generous torso of his 6-foot-4-inch frame. The shirt, size 2X, is torn at the sleeves and notched at the neck. What really makes the shirt stand out is the message stamped across it: "If They're In -- Vote Them Out -- Give Someone Else A Chance. PeteDiLauro.com."